A huge white pig came within ten feet of us and then turned and waddled off back toward the others. He had long deep sides and a strongly curled tail, and he appeared to be smiling. His huge balls hung low and nearly touched the ground.
“That must be the king,” I said.
Crane snorted and smiled. His capped teeth were even and gray. “Yeah, he’s the cock star. You get a Large White boar with a set o’ nuts like that, boy, it only comes once in a lifetime. You can cross him with anything—Blacks, Middle Whites—the whiteness of his meat transports, makes great butcherin’ pig.” Crane looked lovingly at the boar. “I imagine he services fifty, sixty sow a year. Eats like a sumbitch too—seven, eight pounds a day—but he earns it.”
“Pig-keeping your only business, Tommy?”
Crane squinted. “Askin’ questions yours?”
“No. I work in a bar in D.C.”
“Then there’s your answer. Man does different things to get by—hustlin’ drinks is just one, I guess. I do some hauling, small-engine repair—lawn mowers, go-carts. Stuff like that.” Crane ran his hand back through his hair once more and looked me over. “Like I told you, I got work to do. What do you say we cut all this in half?”
“I’m for it.” I looked quickly past Crane to the car. I could only see half of it from that vantage point, but the half I could see included the driver’s seat. Billy wasn’t in it. I returned my attention to Crane. “Talk about April.”
“The truth?” Crane grinned like a disease. “April and me been doin’ the crawl for years now,” he said. “She didn’t love me, and she didn’t love her husband. But she liked what she got here more than she liked what she was gettin’ at home. You see what I’m sayin’?” I shifted my feet. “Anyway, she finally had enough of your friend Slick, and she split. On her way out she came to say good-bye.”
“When was that?”
“Early last week. I don’t remember the day.”
“How long did she stay?”
“One night.”
“She say where she was going?”
“West.”
“That’s pretty vague, Tommy.”
“It’s the way she wanted it, friend.”
“Would you tell me where she was if you knew?”
Crane rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek and slowly shook his head. “No.”
That finished it for now. We stared each other down to no effect amid the mass of pigs that had by now closed in around us. Then Billy appeared from inside the sty and walked out into the yard.
“Hello, Tommy,” he said.
“Goodrich.”
Billy turned to me. “You getting anywhere?”
“No.” I shoved my hands in my jeans and looked around the yard with studied indifference. “Look,” I said. “You guys talk it out, all right? I gotta take a leak.”
Before Crane could stop me I had negotiated myself through a mobile maze of pigs and had entered the sty. I moved quickly out and into the front yard. Maybelle was barking inside the car—her nose had made wormlike marks on the window as she pressed against it—but I ignored her and jumped up the steps and onto the porch. I looked behind me to see if Crane had followed—he hadn’t bothered, or Billy hadn’t let him—and turned the handle of the front door. The door opened and I walked inside.
The first thing I saw was a small living room. There was a battered couch upholstered in faded blue and a heavily varnished table fashioned from the cross section of an oak. On the table was a blue bong, and next to that lay a small mound of green piled in the inverted top of a shoe box. Behind the couch a Roger Dean print was mounted and framed on a yellow wall. On the opposite wall a nineteen-inch Zenith was elevated on a particle-board cart, and next to that stood a rack stereo. The tall black speakers of the system bookended the Zenith. I walked through.
At the end of a narrow hall were three doors. One was opened to Crane’s bedroom. Through the crack of the second I could make out a bathroom. The third door was locked. I entered Crane’s bedroom.
The bedroom window gave a view of the entrance to the compound. Crane and Billy had moved back from the yard and were in the sty now. Billy’s royal blue jacket was visible through the gate, and next to that the duller blue of Crane’s shirt. Only their torsos showed in the darkness of the sty. They appeared to be standing very close to each other. I moved quickly past the window and to the dresser.
Crane’s dresser was topped with loose change, an eel-skin wallet, some odd porcelain figures of black birds, and a porno mag. The cover of the porno mag—Bang-Cock Blossoms in Tie-Land—featured a smiling Asian woman with pink lipstick. I glanced back through the window, then checked Crane’s wallet. Slid between the wallet’s stained plastic covers were two photographs of two different women, neither of whom I recognized. In the billfold was a ten and three ones. I closed the wallet and placed it back on the dresser.
The dresser drawers contained Crane’s underwear, T-shirts, and socks, and in one there was an assortment of lingerie. I went through each drawer quickly, running my hand beneath the clothing, finding nothing. When I was done with that I looked back out through the window. Billy was out of the compound and walking heavily toward the car. There was a particular anger on his face, a genuine anger that I had seen on him only once.
I ducked the window and moved back out into the hall. The locked door was still locked. I entered the bathroom and flushed the head. Then I ran cold water into my cupped hands and splashed it on my face. There was towel rack next to the sink but no towel. I opened a wall cabinet and pulled a white washcloth off the top of the stack. Small silver objects came out with the washcloth and fell to the tiled floor. They made a metallic sound as they hit. I bent down and scooped three pieces of jewelry—a ring and two earrings—up into my hand. I put those in the pocket of my jeans. Then I replaced the washcloth, stepped quickly out into the hall, walked through the living room, and bolted out the front door and onto the porch. The frantic cry of an animal mingled with the whir of the wind.
Billy was in the driver’s seat of the Maxima, staring straight ahead. I moved to his window and made a roll-down motion with my hand. He pressed his thumb to a togglelike switch, and the window slid down.
“Gimme a smoke,” he said. Some red had bled into the azure blue of his wide eyes.
“Sure.” I shook one from my pack. Billy took it by the filter and pushed the lighter into the dash. “Crane tell you anything, Billy?”
Billy bit down on the cigarette as he lit it and spit some smoke out the window. He shook his head. “That son of a bitch knows where she is, Nick.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“Stay here. I’ll give it one more shot.”
The crippled black shadows of the oak pointed toward the compound. I followed their direction. The frenzied animal scream increased as I pushed past the gate, walked across the yard, and entered the sty.
Crane was by the back door. He had tied the ropes of the pulley to the hind legs of the white sow. She hung suspended above an empty trough, her head jerking as she wheezed and screamed. I stood before Crane.
“We’re taking off,” I said.
Crane jerked his hand inside his black vest and pulled out a .38 snub-nosed revolver with a nickel finish. He passed the short barrel across my chest as he moved it to his right hand. I felt the blood drain from my face and then a flush of raw anger as I watched Crane smile. He rested the muzzle of the .38 between the sow’s eyes.
“You look a little shook, Stefanos. Ain’t you never seen an animal slaughtered?”
“I’ve never seen a man like it so much,” I said.
Crane’s smile turned down. He looked toward the sow and back at me. Then he ran his left hand down the sheath strapped to his leg. “What I like is the efficiency, friend. Only takes one shot. Then this stickin’ knife, straight in ahead of the breast bone, six inches deep. They die quick, believe me, and they bleed right out into the trough. No mess.”
I said, “If April doesn’t show up in a few days, I’m coming back down here to talk to you, Crane. Got it?”
Crane lowered the .38 and held it by his side. He looked me over slowly. “I don’t see a man who can back that up. All’s I see is a two-day drunk. It’s over, pal. April’s gone. Now, you get gone too.”
He began to raise the pistol. I backed up and walked away and didn’t look back. Out in the air, I breathed deeply as I headed for the car. Billy reached across and opened the passenger door. I slid into the cold leather seat and stared ahead.
“Well?” Billy said.
“Nothing,” I said as the sow’s scream ripped the air. “Close your window, okay?”
Billy hit the toggle and the window closed tight, sealing out the death cry from the sty. “What about in the house? You find anything?”
“Nothing,” I said, touching the jewelry through the pocket of my jeans. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”
Billy started the engine. As we neared the trees I heard the dull thump of a pistol shot, then tasted the bilious remains of alcohol and breakfast surge up in my throat. I swallowed it and shut my eyes. There was only the hum of the engine then, and the steady sob of Maybelle from the backseat. I pushed the lighter into the dash and fumbled in my jacket for a smoke. We followed the gravel road back through the trees, heading west for the highway.
SIXTEEN
HIGH GRAY CLOUDS chased us into D.C. Billy and I didn’t speak much on the way in. An hour and a half after we left Crane’s property, we parked the Maxima in front of my apartment in Shepherd Park and cut the engine.
Billy looked out at my yard and exhaled with control. “So what’s next?”
“You tell me. You want me to keep going, I’ll do it.”
Billy’s said, “You gotta push Crane, is what you gotta do. You know that, don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat. “Maybe just pushing a guy like him won’t do much. I need something on him.”
“You see anything in his house?”
“I saw a lot of things. But I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
“What did you see?” When I didn’t answer, Billy raised his voice. “Come on, man, I’m paying you…. I’m paying you to tell me.”
“All right, Billy,” I said evenly. “Here it is. Crane’s a greenhead. He’s also into porn—rough trade. April’s doctor told me there was evidence she’d been tied up—that wasn’t you, right?” Billy shook his head and opened his mouth stupidly. “So it was Crane that was giving it to her the hard way. Want me to keep going?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I found some clothing in his dresser, maybe all belonging to the same woman. And I saw some jewelry. April wear much?”
“Jewelry?” Billy pushed some blond hair off his forehead and thought it over. “Well, her wedding ring.”
“What else?”
“A cross. A gold cross on a gold chain, with a small diamond in the center of it.” He paused. “And a ring on her other hand, on her pinky finger. A ruby in a silver antique setting.”
“She wear that stuff all the time?” I said.
“Most of the time, yeah.” Billy looked in my eyes. “You find any of that at Crane’s?”
I shook my head and looked away as I did it. “No.”
Billy put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, Nicky…”
I pulled away from him, opened my door, and put a foot to the curb. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t drop it.”
“Call me,” he said.
“I will.”
I watched his car turn off my street. Then I walked around the side of my landlord’s house and picked up the mail off the stoop that was my entrance. I called for my cat as I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The red light on the answering machine blinked next to the phone on the table that end-capped my sofa. I moved to the machine and pushed down on the bar, then listened to my messages as I looked over the general solicitation that was my mail.
The first message was from Jackie Kahn. She called to remind me about Sunday night, and to “bring a bottle of red, and not that cheap Spanish shit.” Dinner was at 7:30, she said, adding, “Be here by seven.” The second message was from a collection agency. I finished glancing at the mail during that. The third message was from the security guard, James Thomas.
Thomas’s confession was rambling, soaked in the moaning self-pity that comes only at the final inch of a deep night of whiskey. I got what I could from the quiet pauses and the long, low sobs that followed. The sound of a man gone to the bottom is more frightening than the tears of any woman, and I was only thankful that I wasn’t there to see it, to see his cubbish head lowered into his thick hands and the spasmodic, infantile shake of his broad, round shoulders. “I did what you said I did…. I took the money, and… now I’m fixin’ to take more…. I’ll be gone after that…. I want you to know I didn’t kill that boy…. That boy sure didn’t deserve to die…. The man from the orange and red—”
The tape ran out. When it did, my apartment went silent. Then, through the silence, I heard the faint cry of my cat.
I followed the sound out into the backyard. She called out weakly once more when she felt me near, and that’s when I saw her. She was caught in the latticework, where I had found her years before, after the cat fight that had taken her right eye. This time some thick wire my landlord had used as patch had done it; a piece of it had entered her paw and gone deeper as she had moved into it, trying to get away. Now she was lying in the dirt next to the lattice, breathing rapidly and staring ahead glassily. I bent down and tickled the scar tissue of her lost eye and stroked behind her ear. As I did that I pulled the wire from her paw. She stiffened and stopped breathing as one rooted yellow toenail came out with it.
I tore a piece off the tail of my shirt with one hand while I stroked her with the other. Then I wrapped that around her paw and cradled her up into my arms. I ran with her to my Dart and got behind the driver’s seat and cursed the engine when it failed to start. When it did start I gunned it to the animal hospital at the District line on Georgia Avenue, landing on my horn several times to clear traffic along the way. My cat felt cool and hard in my arms. I talked to her all the way in, but she never once looked up in my direction.
Two hours later a young attendant wearing jodhpurs and a flannel shirt brought her out. I signed some papers and then the young woman put my cat into my arms. She was limp but warm now. Her paw was bandaged and her head drooped off my forearm.
“What do I do?” I asked the young woman.
“Just take care of her,” she said coldly. She stared me down and I let her do it.
“For the paw, I mean.”
“Change the bandage and put Neosporin on the puncture before you do it.” She gave me the long face again. “The paw’s not the problem. How long was she out there, without food or water?”
I looked away. A row of animal lovers sat against the wall and stared collectively with pursed lips in my direction. “About a day, I guess,” I mumbled.
“She was dehydrated, and near frozen. You’re lucky her heart didn’t burst.”
I felt my own heart jump. “Sorry,” I whispered to the young attendant, then put an edge on it. “Want to spank me?”
She blinked and sighed. “Just take care of your cat, okay?”
I thanked her and turned. Someone called me a dick as I slinked out the front door.
THAT NIGHT I HAD a slow bourbon and listened to the message from James Thomas. Occasionally I checked on my cat—I had placed her in a cardboard box, on a white blanket next to her blue foam ball—who remained awake and calm but pointedly uninterested in my presence. Later I laid Gil Scott Heron’s Winter in America on the turntable and had another bourbon. “A Very Precious Time” came on, and with it a heavy melancholic buzz. A third bourbon didn’t change that. I picked up the cardboard box that held my cat, put it at the foot of my bed, and went to sleep.
ON SATURDAY AFT
ERNOON I drove out to Laurel with the heater of my Dart blowing cool air toward my numb face. The temperature had dropped severely overnight and remained somewhere in the high teens. I passed through a studentless College Park and then into the warehouse district of Beltsville. As I neared Laurel, the thick traffic reflected the last shopping weekend before Christmas. At a tree stand, a fire burned in an iron barrel. Near that a father tied a Douglas fir to the roof of his station wagon while his kids chased each other around the car. Loudspeakers were lashed to poles, and through the speakers came the echo of canned carols.
I parked the Dart near Laurel Mall and walked to a place called Bernardo O’Reilly’s that stood in the mall’s lot. Once inside I was greeted by a young brunet hostess. She was wearing shorts and a white oxford with green suspenders over the oxford. The suspenders had buttons pinned on them from top to bottom, and on the buttons were “wacky” sayings redundantly punctuated with exclamation points.
“Welcome to Bernardo O’Reilly’s,” the hostess said with a cheerfully glued-up smile, but her eyes had no depth. “One for lunch?”
“One for the bar.”
“All righty,” she said.
“Okeydokey,” I said.
“Right this way.”
I followed her, dodging baby carriages, shopping bags, and perky waiters and waitresses dressed the same way as the hostess. There was the hood of a ’50 Chevy mounted on the wall and next to that antique Coca-Cola ads and Moxie signs, and the mounted heads of wooden Indians. Bernardo O’Reilly’s looked less like a bar than it did a garage sale run by Keebler elves.
I nodded my hostess off as I removed my overcoat, but she was already skipping toward a table where the entire wait staff had gathered to sing “Happy Birthday” to a woman in a pink jogging suit. I had a seat at the empty bar.